


An Eddy of the Truth

by solnyshkonatalia



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Canonical Character Death, Homophobic Language, Howard Stark's A+ Parenting, Identity Porn, Internalized Homophobia, M/M, Past Child Abuse, Period-Typical Homophobia
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-08-13
Updated: 2020-08-13
Packaged: 2021-03-05 19:49:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,980
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25870864
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/solnyshkonatalia/pseuds/solnyshkonatalia
Summary: Howard Stark spent his life in the closet, and Tony is well on his way to doing the same until he discovers a hidden photograph and meets someone from his father's past.Title Credit: Verbatim by Mother Mother
Relationships: Steve Rogers/Tony Stark
Comments: 1
Kudos: 20





	An Eddy of the Truth

I.

December, 1989

On Tuesday morning, Tony woke unceremoniously. His legs were pinned down by the sprawling torso of a sleeping woman for whose name he rummaged in his brain for all of five seconds before giving up. She was beautiful, and probably much older than him, now that he got a closer look in the light of day. Not that he had expected any less, since he’d gone to an off-campus bar the night before. He wondered vaguely how much he’d had to drink—scattered memories of his night flashing in the back of his mind. Then, he remembered with a flush of shame how he had fallen asleep the night before: passed out cold after trying and failing to get it up. The woman’s irritation had been clear from her face, though she hadn’t voiced it for lack of another place to go or a ride home.

Tony felt his cheeks pink with embarrassment. What kind of fucking loser was he—a healthy, wealthy nineteen-year-old whose dick refused to get hard after nearly an hour of attention from an older woman who looked like she could have been a supermodel?

He groaned and wiggled his numb legs free, chalking his spectacular and embarrassing failure up to extreme drunkenness. Then, he made his way to his en-suite bathroom for a nice, hot shower, leaving the nameless woman to sleep. It was the least he could do to not wake her up after disappointing her so massively.

The near-scalding water felt good in contrast to the cool air. For such a wealthy man, Howard Stark was a stingy bastard, and he and Maria tended to leave the heating off in their penthouse apartment all winter. Tony felt himself relax marginally and ran one hand through his hair to soak it evenly under the spray of the showerhead.

When he finally left the shower an hour later, hips wrapped in a fluffy white towel, Tony was relieved to find the woman gone. However, his relief was short-lived when he realized that there was something else missing: his wallet had disappeared from the nightstand. Inside was his credit card, IDs (real _and_ fake), and five-hundred dollars in cash. It was pocket change, but Tony couldn’t help but groan at the thought of the dressing-down he would get if Howard found out. Too worn out to continue worrying, though, Tony flopped back onto the bed and reached for the remote on his nightstand to turn the TV on.

He had an odd desire to watch cartoons, and when the TV automatically settled on the news, he was preparing to change the channel when something stopped him. Right in the middle of the screen were two photographs side-by side: one of an overturned and totaled black car, and the other a portrait of Howard and Maria Stark.

II.

January, 1990

“Come on, Tones, up.” Rhodey’s voice was jarring, breaking through the silence of the bedroom, and Tony groaned as he felt himself begin to float back into consciousness. He heard the sound of the curtains being pulled along their runners, and then the room was flooded with light. He cracked his eyes and found Rhodey standing by the window with his arms crossed and pity all over his face.

“Rhodey,” Tony rasped by way of greeting, then shut his eyes and rolled back over.

“C’mon, buddy; I told you I would drive you back to the dorms this morning. It’s already noon.”

“Need a drink first,” Tony grumbled. “Hungover.”

“No, you need to drink water. Here.” Rhodey tossed his water bottle, and it hit Tony’s head.

“Hair of the dog, honeybear.”

“Yeah, did Howard teach you that?”

“Careful what you say,” Tony said, then rolled over to stumble out of bed. He picked up the discarded bottle of wine by his bed on his way up and took a long pull right from the bottle. “He’s barely cold in his grave.”

“Sorry, Tones,” Rhodey said.

“Jesus fucking Christ. It was a joke, you know better than to apologize for that. I’m glad the bastard is dead. Good fucking riddance.”

“You don’t have to do that. I know you’re upset.”

“Whatever. People die all the time. You should go wait outside while I get dressed and get my shit together.”

“Okay,” Rhodey agreed, but he looked skeptical.

“Oh, and some of Howard’s and Mom’s stuff that I still have to go through is in boxes by the front door. Could you load them up in your truck?”

-

Tony hadn’t gone to the funeral. He was thoroughly pickled by noon the day of, and still fuming at the fact of having to find out about his parents’ death from the news. Of course, Obadiah gave his excuse in the kind of _reasonable_ voice that suggested that Tony would only sound hysterical and unreasonable if he got angry.

 _‘Oh, Tony,’_ he’d said. _‘You know how important it is to get ahead of this kind of story before the tabloids start running wild with baseless rumors. I was simply thinking of your wellbeing and the wellbeing of the company.’_

In other words, Obadiah had been too busy giving a show for the press, expressing his _deep, deep condolences_ for Tony, without ever thinking to break the news to Tony himself that his parents were dead.

He hadn’t gone to the will reading, either, but to say he had inherited a lot was an understatement. The most important things he had inherited, though—at least, the most valuable to him—were the boxes upon boxes of his mother’s belongings. Of course, Howard’s things were mixed in, too, but Tony planned to burn those as soon as he’d mined for anything of worth.

In January, when he arrived at his dorm at MIT, the first thing Tony noticed was that the email he’d received from the university the week before had not, in fact, been an elaborate prank, and his single room was no longer a single. While he was on Christmas break, grieving the untimely death of his parents, some asshole had taken over the unoccupied half of his dorm room. All things considered, he took it in stride: as soon as Rhodey had hugged him goodbye, he pushed the heaviest box of Howard’s possessions up against the door, just to watch his new roommate struggle to move it.

Then, he got to work on the thing he'd been putting off since Christmas Day: he began opening up his mother and father’s memories. Most of the things in the boxes were essentially worthless in terms of money, but to Tony, they were invaluable: the red, white, and blue silk scarf his mother had worn to the beach when they’d gone to Rhode Island for the fourth of July the year Tony turned ten, a half empty bottle of Chanel no. 5, a blue ceramic ashtray full of bobby pins and barrettes. There was a porcelain music box at the bottom of one box, wrapped in bubble wrap, that played _La Vie en Rose_. In another, there was the wind chime that used to hang on the porch of Maria’s childhood home, and the tinkling sound it made when held in his shaking hand made his eyes water, made his heart feel so hollow and bereft that he shoved it right back into the box and moved onto another.

This one was clearly marked on all sides: _HOWARD ULYSSES STARK, FRAGILE_ . It was, Tony puzzled to find, mostly filled with newspapers and packing peanuts. He tossed the packaging aside until he found, wrapped in the funnies section of _The Post_ from ‘85, a small porcelain box. When Tony opened that, the only things inside were a set of dog tags so worn that the name of the soldier was illegible and an envelope labeled _January 11, 1945_.

Tony turned the envelope over in his hands and furrowed his brow. Howard hadn’t ever been the sentimental type, so what was so special a memory to him that it warranted such careful packaging and a box all to itself?

He opened the envelope.

-

_On a balmy evening in July, 1973, a three-year-old Tony ran, giggling, from his nanny, a woman in her 20s, the most recent in a string of caretakers assigned to him in the past month while the Jarvises were out of the country visiting family. As her high-pitched, anxious voice carried through the empty corridors of the mansion, Tony, already crafty even as a toddler, managed to lose her by hiding out in the laundry room until he heard the pitter-patter of her footsteps fly past._

_He grinned as he basked in his victory, but then the sliver of light coming through the cracked door grew, and a rough hand reached right past mop buckets and laundry hampers to grab Tony's arm and yank him from his hiding place. Tony found himself face-to-belligerent-face, then, with his father, whose bruising grip only seemed to tighten as he glared at Tony._

_"I hope you're having fun, you little shit," Howard hissed, the burning stench of alcohol on his breath. "I was in the middle of an important business discussion, and your babysitter interrupted it to tell me you'd run off again."_

_Tony frowned up at Howard, and Howard loosened his grip, only to pinch the baby fat on the underside of Tony's arm ruthlessly._

_"Ouch!" Tony yelped. "Daddy, it hurts!"_

_"I sure fucking hope it hurts, Tony!" Howard spat. "It will be worse if you don't stop interrupting my meetings, do you understand?"_

_He finally let go of Tony's arm entirely, and Tony felt his lip begin to quiver._

_"Yes, Daddy," he said. "I'm sorry."_

_When Howard dragged him out of the laundry room to haul him back to his frazzled nanny, Tony caught a glimpse of a man, no older than 22, standing in the doorway of Howard’s office with his tie askew, hair a mess, and a red flush high on his cheeks. He gave Tony a look that was half-panicked, half-sympathetic, then slipped out of sight._

-

The memory must have been one of Tony’s earliest, but he hadn’t ever thought much of it before this moment, as he pulled a single photograph from the envelope and immediately dropped it, and the dog tags, with a comically dramatic gasp.

Tony’s head swam for the next minute or two before he bent over to pick up the things he had dropped. The photograph was small, just the right size to fit in a wallet, but Tony could see clearly why Howard hadn’t kept it in his wallet. It was old, faded and torn in one corner, worn from someone running their finger over it hundreds of times, and it depicted, clear as day, a naked man sprawled across someone’s—Howard’s—bed. The only thing covering him was a thin sheet over his lap, but he was clearly a man; the flat, hard planes of his chest, stomach, and arms couldn’t lie. The man’s face was invisible—that part of the photo was so worn down that all that could be seen was the white paper it had been printed on. How much time had Howard spent looking at this picture; running his thumb over this unidentifiable man’s frozen face?

Suddenly, the man in his father’s office made a whole lot more sense.

Objectively, Tony should have been overjoyed by this discovery: the great Howard Stark, the man made of iron, the man who had hurt him so much as a child, was a faggot. Of all the revelations that could have come to light about his dead father, this was probably the best case scenario—definitive proof that Tony was nothing like him.

Tony wasn’t happy though. He just felt sick to his stomach, and he barely made it to the bathroom before losing his liquid breakfast in the toilet.


End file.
